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Shakespeare & Beyond

Q&A: Reynaldo Piniella and Emily Lyon on their bilingual Hamlet
Reynaldo Piniella and Emily Lyon
Shakespeare and Beyond

Q&A: Reynaldo Piniella and Emily Lyon on their bilingual Hamlet

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In this bilingual Hamlet, a Black and Latinx prince has his sense of identity fractured by the loss of his Black father.

Q&A: Lauren Gunderson on her new play, A Room in the Castle, about the women of Hamlet
Shakespeare and Beyond

Q&A: Lauren Gunderson on her new play, A Room in the Castle, about the women of Hamlet

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Excerpt - "Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne" by Katherine Rundell
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt - "Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne" by Katherine Rundell

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“Spiritually speaking, many of us confronted with the thought of death perform the psychological equivalence of hiding in a box with our knees under our chin: Donne hunted death, battled it, killed it, saluted it, threw it parties.” Read more…

Excerpt: "The Final Curtain: The Art of Dying on Stage" by Laurence Senelick
The Final Curtain cover
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt: "The Final Curtain: The Art of Dying on Stage" by Laurence Senelick

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Shakespeare’s plays provide ample opportunity for dramatic deaths onstage, and 18th-century English actors like David Garrick transformed simple stage directions in the text into “stirring set-pieces,” as Laurence Senelick writes in the below excerpt from his new book, “The Final…

Arthur Murphy's 18th-century collection of humor - Excerpt: "Laughing Histories" by Joy Wiltenburg
People laughing and playing music
Shakespeare and Beyond

Arthur Murphy's 18th-century collection of humor - Excerpt: "Laughing Histories" by Joy Wiltenburg

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“Murphy may be the first person in history to subject laughter to such intensive and extensive study, at least from the perspective of a laughter professional,” writes Joy Wiltenburg about the 18th-century writer’s 500-page compilation of humor, in this excerpt…

Henry VIII and herbals: Prince Charles and Camilla's visit to the Folger Shakespeare Library
Prince Charles and Camilla
Shakespeare and Beyond

Henry VIII and herbals: Prince Charles and Camilla's visit to the Folger Shakespeare Library

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See some of the Folger collection items that Charles and Camilla examined when they visited the Folger in 2005, including an early modern book on plants that got the prince’s attention.

Excerpt - "Susanna Hall, Her Book" by Jennifer Falkner
Susanna Hall Her Book cover
Shakespeare and Beyond

Excerpt - "Susanna Hall, Her Book" by Jennifer Falkner

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In the opening scene of Jennifer Falkner’s novella “Susanna Hall, Her Book,” the queen of England has just arrived at New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. But Susanna, the eldest daughter of William Shakespeare, has reasons for not wanting to host Henrietta…

The soliloquy and Hamlet - Excerpt: 'The Elizabethan Mind' by Helen Hackett
The Elizabethan Mind
Shakespeare and Beyond

The soliloquy and Hamlet - Excerpt: 'The Elizabethan Mind' by Helen Hackett

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Helen Hackett explores Shakespeare’s use of the soliloquy in “Hamlet,” including the famous “To be or not to be” speech, in this excerpt from her new book, “The Elizabethan Mind: Searching for the Self in an Age of Uncertainty,” published…

Active reading in the 16th century: Commonplace books and sammelbands
Sammelband
Shakespeare and Beyond

Active reading in the 16th century: Commonplace books and sammelbands

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Collecting extracts of text in commonplace books and binding multiple books together to create a sammelband were two notable practices of readers in the 16th and 17th centuries, as Jason Scott-Warren (University of Cambridge) explains in this excerpt from a…

A Midsummer Night's Dream: Insights from Folger Theatre dramaturg Michele Osherow
actors performing a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare and Beyond

A Midsummer Night's Dream: Insights from Folger Theatre dramaturg Michele Osherow

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“Nowhere does Shakespeare attend more to theatrical enterprise and potential than in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” writes Michele Osherow, Folger Theatre’s resident dramaturg. “It makes the play irresistible to those who practice theatre and to those who crave its incomparable…

A game of chess
chess board with pieces
Shakespeare and Beyond

A game of chess

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Take a closer look at some unusual chess sets in the Folger collection, spanning continents and centuries.

Quiz: Can you complete these famous quotes from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'?
Bottom and Titania
Shakespeare and Beyond

Quiz: Can you complete these famous quotes from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'?

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For each of these famous quotes from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” can you fill in the blank with the missing word?

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